Last Sunday, an Aer Lingus flight originally bound for Leeds made a u-turn back to Dublin Airport due to an issue with it’s landing gear.
The crew on the ATR aircraft made a swift return to the Irish airport following this discovery.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
EI3394 – Dublin to Leeds…
Aer Lingus flight EI3394 is a routine scheduled flight between Dublin Airport and Leeds.
The affected rotation involved in the incident is registered as EI-HDI.
As per data from Planespotters.net, EI-HDI is a 10.9 year old ATR 72-600 that was delivered to Emerald Airlines, the operator for Aer Lingus Regional in July 2022.
Furthermore, of the ATR 72-600 fleet, Aer Lingus Regional operates 17 of them, of which 15 are in active service and two parked.
The average age amongst the aircraft is at 8.8 years.
EI3394 departed Dublin at 1840 local time on March 17 and initially climbed out towards Leeds Bradford Airport.
Not long after departure, the crew opted to return back to DUB amid a problem with the aircraft.
By around 1907 local time, the aircraft was on the ground safe without further incident.
The Problem at Hand…
As per @Shauns_Aviation on X, the reason for the return to Dublin and not to continue on to Leeds was due to a landing gear issue.
He reports that the crew were unable to retract the landing gear after takeoff.
Following it’s arrival, engineers met the aircraft on stand to begin the process of maintenance straight away.
At the time of writing (17/3/24 @ 2110 UK time), EI-HDI has not operated another commercial flight from Dublin following this.
All eyes will be on when the aircraft will be back in commercial service, as well as what delay the Leeds-bound passengers would have faced.
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